What Does Your Profile Pic Style Say About You?

By Clare Acheson - 30 Aug 2015

Ah, profile pictures. The window into the soul in today’s digital age, amirite? Your profile picture speaks a thousand words, so it’s vital that you pick one that’s going to speak a thousand of the right words. Not sure what your profile pic is projecting? Read on for our handy guide to today’s most common headshots…Which one are you?

The Professional Headshot

Unless this is your Linkedin profile picture, you really have no excuse. In fact, even if this IS your Linkedin profile pic, you have to excuse either. Nobody wants to hire a cardboard cut out of a human being and, if they do, they’re probably not the people you want to be working for.

The Stained Animal Onesie

You are pretty much the most fun, least responsible person I know. You’ve been on more lads’ nights out than you’ve had home-cooked dinners, and you gleefully declare to anyone who will listen that you are 100% in it for the banter. You’ve lost at least one job due to turning up at work like this.

The Girls-Night-Out

Your girls are your ultimate BFFs forever and ever, as displayed by the pic of five of you swigging cocktails and laughing manically. You have a Facebook group convo titled ‘Top babes x x x’ which is mostly full of emojis and discussions about mid-week wine-focussed get-togethers. It’s really difficult to tell which one you actually are because there are no photos on any of your social media profiles that feature you and only you.

The Drugged Tiger Hug

You once went on holiday to somewhere in East Asia but you can’t quite remember where and it doesn’t really matter because all you cared about was getting this one photo and going to a full moon party. In winter, you update this with a pic of you on a snowboard that was taken about 6 years ago but your ski goggles are so large that you’ve decided nobody will notice.

The Yoga-Butt Mirror Selfie

The successor to the duckface mirror selfie. You live on green juice and positive Pinterest quotes and not much else. Your favourite thing to do at the weekends is get up really, really early and change yoga pants at least four times during the day. You worship at the church of Lululemon, and you love anything raw, protein-infused, or that claims to be saving the environment.

The Duckface Mirror Selfie

…Um, you should probably get into yoga sometime soon.

The ‘I’m With The Band’

You once met an early naughties pop punk band and had your photo taken with them, only for it to become incredibly uncool to like punk pop. You still get drunk and play bass guitar really loudly and equally badly, and complain about ‘the system’ at any chance you’re given. You’re waiting for Blink 182 to become ironically cool again…You should probably give up on that, bro.

The Motorised Vehicle Lover

Your car/motorbike/quad/whatever means the world to you, as indicated by its woefully untasteful paint job, rims, LED lights and other god-awful bells and whistles. You were thinking of sitting on the bonnet to make this shot look more natural but you’d only just waxed it and so you’re standing awkwardly beside your pride and joy, looking like you’ve been clumsily Photoshopped into the frame.

The Above-Head Doe Eyed Selfie

You first used this style of selfie in your MySpace profile circa 2003 and it’s worked since so you’ve stuck with it. You think it shows off your best assets—your eyes and your cute smile—but actually everyone keeps liking it because they can see your entire cleavage. Someone will use your pic to create a fake Ashley Madison account and some unscrupulous gent’s life will be ruined as a result.

The Fluoro Face-Paint Festival Goer

You book at least 32,659 festivals every summer and own at least a dozen pairs of fairy wings. Your friends all have single-word names like Crystalxxzxx and Sphynxorz and DJ at poorly-attended weekly psy-trance nights. You love everyone, all the time, forever. 70% of your social media feed is made up of messages about how you’ve recently lost your phone. Frankly, it’s a miracle that you manage to maintain any sort of social media presence whatsoever.

The Full-Body Muscle-Bound Gym Junkie

It took you forever to work out how to shoot this snap without cutting off your super-toned calves and specially designed lifting shoes. You love nothing more than an overly complex fitness prep routine to ‘get you in the zone,’ followed by a lifting session with the boys. You wish the fluoro lights in the gym were a little more forgiving and, as a result, have gone to town on the ‘warm’ filter, making you look like a particularly built wife-beater wearing tangerine.

The Facebook Default Image

Either you’re a total ironic smartarse who’s all about digital privacy, or you’re my mum.

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By Clare Acheson

Clare is The Urban List’s in-house expert on all things whisky, cheese and bicycles. She’s most likely to be found discovering backstreet galleries and cocktail bars in the city’s inner north, and loves nothing more than making people laugh (or cry?) on the internet.